From Deseret News archives:
Saving Social Security system depends on raising birthate
The answer is simple, though largely ignored in the current debate over Social Security reform. Today's retirees may not have paid anywhere near as much in taxes as today's workers do. But most contributed something far more valuable to the system: They created, raised and educated the baby boomers.
As my mother used to say, "You try doing that." Children ultimately finance Social Security and other programs for the elderly, and it's the decline in the American birthrate since the postwar "baby boom" years that most threatens the benefits of future retirees. Unfortunately, the Bush administration's plans for Social Security don't remedy that core problem. The only true solution is to ease the burdens on today's parents that are driving down birthrates, including the substantial disincentives to parenthood that Social Security itself helps to create.
But as long as birthrates remain below the levels necessary to prevent rapid population aging, that still leaves fewer workers available to support each Social Security beneficiary, as well as every other cost of government, including Medicare and the mounting national debt. A relative decline in the size of the working-age population will also make it more difficult to finance the enormous levels of additional borrowing that would be needed to implement the administration's call for private retirement accounts.
The core problem remains one of human capital: As a nation, we're not producing enough children to provide us with the support we will need, and expect, in old age. Today, 18 percent of women ages 40 to 44 are childless. That's up from 10 percent in 1976.
Meanwhile, large families are disappearing. In 1976, almost 60 percent of women ages 40 to 44 had three or more children. Today, that percentage has dropped in half, to 29 percent. All told, Americans no longer have enough children to reproduce themselves, let alone finance the Social Security system.
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